FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT EMERGENCY LANDING - PAGE 2

A plane landing might sound simple enough -- except if it touches down near houses in a residential neighborhood. According to state police, a Cessna airplane made an emergency landing at about 4 a.m. Sunday in the 100 block of Pelican Reach Road. Two people were in the plane. The pilot, James Yates, of the 3400 Challis Drive in Chesapeake, landed the Cessna on the road because it had run out of fuel. The other person in the plane, a woman, was not identified. Once it landed, the plane struck two signs -- including a stop sign -- and a 1994 Toyota 4Runner.

A 39-year-old James City County man who landed his helicopter in a residential neighborhood was charged Tuesday night with recklessly operating an aircraft, county police said. The charge is a misdemeanor. "The element for disaster was huge" when Mark Robert Walker touched down in the driveway of a house in the Mirror Lake Estates subdivision Monday afternoon, said Deputy Police Chief Ken Middlebrook. "Kids were playing 30 feet away." Walker, of the 100 block of Constance Avenue in Powhatan Shores, disputed Middlebrook's allegations, insisting that he always operates safely.

JAMES CITY — A Cessna plane crashed into the Williamsburg Landing retirement community Friday evening, decimating the plane and killing two people. District Chief Bob Ryalls with the James City Fire Department said it was unclear if the plane was taking off from or landing at Williamsburg-Jamestown Airport when it crashed just before 5 p.m. in a wooded area on Boatright Circle. Virginia State Police confirmed the fatalities but did not release the victim's identities. Herbert Gordon, a retired captain with the Williamsburg Fire Department, saw the Cessna when it first began to show signs of distress.

The Coast Guard rescued a heavyset red-suited man from a lonely Mathews County beach Saturday morning after his aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing. The aviator was on his way to a children's Christmas party at the Coast Guard's Milford Haven Station in Mathews. But a severe downdraft forced him to land about 5 miles away at Haven Beach on the Chesapeake Bay, said petty officer Vann Burgess. About 8 a.m. the station had received a radio message from the fishing boat Yule Tide, reporting what appeared to be a bright red flare - "You could even say it glowed," according to the communications log - falling slowly offshore.

A husband and wife made an emergency landing in a Seaford yard after the private, two-passenger aircraft had engine problems Thursday evening. The couple landed the plane in the side yard of Seaford resident Belinda Kidd, who was outside cleaning her Tahoe when the plane glided into her property. "All of a sudden, he came down," said Kidd, 35. "I was scared to death," adding that she feared for the safety of her son and nephew, who were on a pier just feet from where the plane landed.

An elderly Middlesex County woman was severely burned when her car ran off the road Monday afternoon near Urbanna, knocked down a utility pole, overturned and caught fire. Authorities withheld her name until relatives could be notified. She was taken by Nightingale helicopter to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where she was in critical condition late Monday. Middlesex Deputy David Bushey said two men, whose names he did not know, helped the woman from the burning car. Fire had spread for about 30 yards around the accident scene, Bushey said, and "We had live wires down all over the place."

A judge has squelched Virginia Power's bid to begin constructing power lines skirting Hummel Field in Middlesex County. Circuit Judge John E. DeHardit decided Wednesday afternoon that he needs more information about the hazards the lines could pose to aircraft landing and taking off at the field, which is on Route 3 near the Robert O. Norris Bridge over the Rappahannock River. An attorney agreed upon by both sides in the case will hear further evidence and report to the court within 90 days.

After crash-landing her rented plane onto a New Jersey golf course last fall, York County resident Wendy Kraus was determined to get back in the cockpit to fight ghosts of that harrowing experience. She's returned to the air with a vengeance, logging about 20 hours aloft since she ran out of gas in September. "Right after the accident, the rental agency gave me a plane for a day," Kraus said. "It was kind of like if you fall off a horse, you get back on and ride." In September, four days after she earned her pilot's license, Kraus was flying above the New Jersey shore, coming home after attending a cousin's wedding in Pennsylvania.

Capt. Alfred Haynes had been pulled from the battered cockpit and was being placed in an ambulance when he asked if "everybody made it" out of the flaming airliner. One of the survivors standing nearby said, "No." "I killed people," Haynes responded. Haynes was the pilot of the United Airlines DC-10 that crashed during an emergency landing in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1989, burst into flames and tumbled into a cornfield. One hundred twelve people died in the crash, but 184 survived.